Alchemy is the art of transforming base metals into precious metals, usually silver and/or gold (Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-fihrist , ed. Tajaddud, 417). Although alchemy can be considered one of the ancestors of modern chemistry, perhaps more importantly it can also be viewed as a branch of natural philosophy. According to C. G. Jung's school of analytical psychology, alchemical processes can be seen as projections of archetypes and the collective unconscious onto matter, which leads to the interpretation of alchemical work as the process of individuation (Ullmann,